Edward C. Prescott

Infobox Scientist
name = Edward C. Prescott


image_size = 180px
caption =
birth_date = Birth date and age|1940|12|26|mf=y
birth_place = Glens Falls, New York, USA
nationality = United States
field = Economics
work_places = Arizona State University Carnegie Mellon University Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
University of Minnesota University of Pennsylvania
alma_mater = Case Western Reserve University Carnegie Mellon University
Swarthmore College
doctoral_advisor = Michael C. Lovell
doctoral_students = Costas Azariadis
Edward Green
Gary Hansen Finn Kydland
Rajnish Mehra
José Víctor Ríos Rull
known_for = Quantitative general equilibrium business cycle theory
Time consistency in economic policy
prizes = Nobel Prize in Economics (2004)

Edward Christian Prescott (born December 26, 1940) is an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". This research was primarily conducted while both Kydland and Prescott were affiliated with the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University.

Biography

Early life

Prescott was born in Glens Falls, New York, to Mathilde Helwig Prescott and William Clyde Prescott. In 1962, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College, where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He then received a master's degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1963 and a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 1967.

Academic career

From 1966 to 1971, Prescott taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He then returned to Carnegie Mellon until 1980, when he moved to the University of Minnesota, where he taught until 2003. In 1978, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, where he was named a Ford Foundation Research Professor. In the following year, he visited Northwestern University and stayed there until 1982. [http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2004/prescott-autobio.html] [http://wpcarey.asu.edu/directory/stafffaculty.cfm?cobid=2147709] Since 2003, he has been teaching at Arizona State University. In 2004, he held the Maxwell and Mary Pellish Chair in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [http://www.ucsb.edu/nobel/kydland.shtml] In 2006, he held the Shinsei Bank Visiting Professorship at New York University.

Currently working as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and as a professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, he is a major figure in macroeconomics, especially the theories of business cycles and general equilibrium. In his "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," published in 1977 with Finn E. Kydland, he analyzed whether central banks should have strict numerical targets or be allowed to use their discretion in setting monetary policy. He is also well known for his work on the Hodrick-Prescott Filter, used to smooth fluctuations in a time series.

Honours and awards

* Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2004)
* Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, Northwestern University (2002)
* Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992)
* Fellow, Econometric Society (1980)
* Alexander Henderson Award, Carnegie Mellon (1967)

References

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* Kehoe, T. J., and E. C. Prescott, editors, [http://www.greatdepressionsbook.com "Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century"] , Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2007.
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External links

* [http://minneapolisfed.org/research/prescott/ Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis]
* [http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2004/index.html Nobel Foundation]
* [http://ideas.repec.org/e/ppr10.html IDEAS/RePEc]

Persondata
NAME= Prescott, Edward C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American economist
DATE OF BIRTH= December 26, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH= Glens Falls, New York
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=